Blur To Play Warm-Up Shows

• 16th Dec 2008

Blur will play a series of warm-up shows ahead of their full scale reunion show in Hyde Park next July, Damon Albarn told Absolute Radio.

Albarn, in a busy day of interviews, told the rock station: “We do need to play quite a lot to get ourselves back up to that, you can't just walk on stage at Hyde Park without putting the hours in. We have to do a lot of warm-up gigs. Personally I'd like to go and visit some places that were really important to us when we were growing up”.

He also told Zane Lowe on Radio 1: “[The reunion] is a bit terrifying because we haven't even thought – any of us – on that scale for a long time”.

Graham Coxon also told Lowe about why it has taken him and the other three members of the band to get back onto friendly terms. He said: “We didn't argue or fall out – we just went away. I seemed to just go off and they seemed to just go off and that was it. We did talk a couple of times during the last six, seven years but it seemed clear but we weren't very at peace with the situation”.

Albarn added:”Graham and I suddenly clicked again after what seemed like a lifetime. We stopped communicating a long time ago”.

Meanwhile, Alex James told The Mirror that the reunion could prove to be a disaster. He said: “God knows what it will sound like in the studio. Now Damon writes operas, Graham's listening to finger-plucking folk music, Dave's going to be a prime minister and I'm conducting orchestras so it's going to be weird. It could be shit. Now I listen to violin and French horns. I have an on-going love affair with orchestras, they go well in the countryside”.